Month: November 2016

As I talked about in my letter to the Governor of Virginia, Terry McAuliffe, and the Secretary of Education, Dietra Trent, the Library of Virginia has been forced to make massive and devastating budget cuts, which account for 12% of their total staff being laid off. The other shoe has now dropped: the Library will now only be open four days a week, Tuesday through Friday.

Critically, closing the Library on Saturday will be the most painful for the general public, since that is the day that people who work are able to get there and do research. The only statement that the Library made, to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, was

“Suspending our Saturday hours and closing our reading rooms on Mondays is heartbreaking for us, but is necessary,” Sandra G. Treadway, Librarian of Virginia, said in a statement issued Tuesday morning.

Other services that will be cut include “training for records officers as well as longer wait times to fill orders for digital images and to make new collections available.”

Digitization. Processing. Reference. Training. All aspects of the Library of Virginia’s services are being affected and, make no mistake, it is crushing blow.